The Official Shoot the Moon Thread

Inspeqtor wrote in post #19215141
Beautiful Capture!!!

- many thanks for kind response, Charles

Russ

Went out looking for Kingfishers this morning but the setting Moon against a clear sky when I arrived was too nice to ignore.

There's just something about the moon coming up through the trees.

I love seeing the close ups and amazed by the details many of you capture, I can stare at them for quite some time.

My question to you guys, what do you do with these images?

I've often wondered is it for:

- Personal enjoyment
- Attempting to publish
- Individual sale (shows, art galleries etc.)
- Research

Thanks in advance for providing an answer to my curiosity.

Shaun Liddy wrote in post #19216637
I love seeing the close ups and amazed by the details many of you capture, I can stare at them for quite some time.

My question to you guys, what do you do with these images?

I've often wondered is it for:

- Personal enjoyment
- Attempting to publish
- Individual sale (shows, art galleries etc.)
- Research

Thanks in advance for providing an answer to my curiosity.

I haven't done much High resolution Lunar imaging for a while but when I do, it's for personal enjoyment, and my interest in astronomy, which is as important a hobby to me as terrestrial photography.
So it's a ticking/collecting exercise - collecting an image for every phase, libration etc, capturing every feature - craters, mountains, domes, rilles etc. The same reason I tick a bird off my list, or a butterfly, bee or other invertebrate species.

I don't have any interest in sale, but I have been published in astro mags. I also share my images on an astronomy forum and I did once get a PM from a person who'd joined to ask if she could use one of my images for business. I was dubious at first in case she was running a scam but thought what the heck, her business checked out so I sold it to her for £50 and my inverted full moon image is now printed on a range of T-shirts (which I believe has sold about 30 units...)

Lonely moon.

Taken with my Fujifilm X-T10 & Meade Starnavigator 127 NG Maksutov Cassigrain Telescope.

Heya,

68% Illuminated Waxing Gibbous tonight:

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/2kUj​VhN

Adding to the glorious moon shots here - this is my humble hand shot from yesterday just as the sun was setting.

P

MalVeauX wrote in post #19226108
Heya,

68% Illuminated Waxing Gibbous tonight:

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/2kUj​VhN LunarDisc_68p_WaxGib_2​00mmF6_ComaCorrected_I​MX183_Color_400frames_​04212021 by Martin Wise, on Flickr

Astrobin for the full resolution image (please feel free to explore, its a large high res image):

https://astrob.in/full​/6x3npj/0/?real=

200mm F6 Quartz Newtonian
Baader MPCC Mark III
QHY183C Camera

Hosted photo: posted by MalVeauX in
./showthread.php?p=192​26108&i=i220819051
forum: Astronomy & Celestial

Very best,

Excellent as always Martin. LOVE the full res image!!

Looked in Astrobin for full resolution and it is very impressive.
Martin! Is this stack of multiple shots of color pictures or stack of video frames, or single shot? I tried to stack color video frames taken with ZWO ASI294MC camera but never got sharp, clear and saturated image like yours. Not even close. What is your technique in brief?

Slagrim wrote in post #19227213
Looked in Astrobin for full resolution and it is very impressive.
Martin! Is this stack of multiple shots of color pictures or stack of video frames, or single shot? I tried to stack color video frames taken with ZWO ASI294MC camera but never got sharp, clear and saturated image like yours. Not even close. What is your technique in brief?

Hi,

It's video footage from an IMX183 sensor (2.4um pixels, 1" size sensor, 20MP), the sharpness is secondary to seeing conditions, nothing more (my newtonian wasn't even perfectly colimated). Good seeing is always the first and foremost thing when it comes to high contrast, high resolution imaging of any sort. I use FireCapture for acquisition. For color, I enable the color channel balance in the acquisition tab (select the eye next to RGB channels). This separates them so that you can see the histogram of all three channels. I adjust the exposure of each color channel individually so that they have the same histogram, so that the RGB channels are aligned (this is critical to get natural color, consistently). I adjust final exposure with normal exposure controls, since the channels are now closely aligned at acquisition. I run this through AS!3 as normal and allow it to align the RGB and debayer it automatically. I take the final output image (TIF) and I use Registax6 to do another RGB align of the channels (and nothing else, strictly). Then I can saturate it in any photo editor I want. I used CS5.1 here, old Photosphere. The key is low saturation but more layers, so for example, I may use a layer mask with saturation increase of +12~15 and simply duplicate it that layer a few times (8~12 times maybe). Then I do one more saturation layer and increase saturation & vibrance until you see the color you see in my image above. For sharpening, I didn't do anything fancy. Just low level deconvolution, higher levels of fine unsharp mask (I use IMPPG for all of this, free). I didn't do any sharpening beyond that, that's just the difference between good seeing conditions.

Very best,

MalVeauX wrote in post #19227239
Hi,

It's video footage from an IMX183 sensor (2.4um pixels, 1" size sensor, 20MP), the sharpness is secondary to seeing conditions, nothing more (my newtonian wasn't even perfectly colimated). Good seeing is always the first and foremost thing when it comes to high contrast, high resolution imaging of any sort. I use FireCapture for acquisition. For color, I enable the color channel balance in the acquisition tab (select the eye next to RGB channels). This separates them so that you can see the histogram of all three channels. I adjust the exposure of each color channel individually so that they have the same histogram, so that the RGB channels are aligned (this is critical to get natural color, consistently). I adjust final exposure with normal exposure controls, since the channels are now closely aligned at acquisition. I run this through AS!3 as normal and allow it to align the RGB and debayer it automatically. I take the final output image (TIF) and I use Registax6 to do another RGB align of the channels (and nothing else, strictly). Then I can saturate it in any photo editor I want. I used CS5.1 here, old Photosphere. The key is low saturation but more layers, so for example, I may use a layer mask with saturation increase of +12~15 and simply duplicate it that layer a few times (8~12 times maybe). Then I do one more saturation layer and increase saturation & vibrance until you see the color you see in my image above. For sharpening, I didn't do anything fancy. Just low level deconvolution, higher levels of fine unsharp mask (I use IMPPG for all of this, free). I didn't do any sharpening beyond that, that's just the difference between good seeing conditions.

Very best,

Thank you Martin. I did the same sequence. I missed Photoshop layering for saturation. Will try it. Thanks again and clear sky.

wait all day to take pic's of the pink moon, not a cloud in the sky most of the day, until now!!!!